Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique about a reboot process of a network device connected to a network.
Description of the Related Art
There is a known monitoring system that is configured by connecting a network device (hereinafter referred to as a device), such as an image forming apparatus, to a monitoring apparatus, such as a monitoring terminal, through a network. In this system, a device is managed using the SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and MIB (Management Information Base) information, for example.
When the monitoring apparatus changed various settings of the device, reboot of the device may be needed in order to reflect the changed settings. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2003-316465 (JP 2003-316465A) discloses a method of writing into an MIB object for performing a reboot process using the SNMP as a remote reboot method from a monitoring apparatus. The monitoring apparatus determines whether remote reboot of the device is available. When the remote reboot is available, the monitoring apparatus instructs the remote reboot. When the remote reboot is unavailable, the monitoring apparatus displays a message to urge the reclosing of power. Accordingly, the device is guided so as to be rebooted.
The method of instructing the remote reboot from the monitoring apparatus to the device is achievable by writing a rated value to “prtGeneralReset” via the SNMP. The “prtGeneralReset” is an MIB object standardized by RFC (Request for Comments).
Incidentally, the device may receive the reboot instruction from remoteness during an operation. For example, when the image forming apparatus as a network device receives a reboot instruction during a copy process or a print process, the process may be interrupted and a reboot process may be suddenly started according to the reboot instruction. Moreover, the same situation may occur also when a reboot instruction is received during a user's operation, such as maintenance. In order to avoid such an unpreferable situation, the image forming apparatus is required not to receive a reboot instruction and to reply that a process corresponding to the reboot instruction cannot be performed when receiving a reboot instruction during the process of a job.
Although the error code defined by the protocol level of the SNMP allows a reply that expresses the error of the reboot instruction, the operating state (In-job, In-maintenance, etc.) cannot be added to a replay using the error code. Accordingly, since the supervisory unit cannot distinguish a reason why the image forming apparatus could not reboot, the factor of the error is unknown, and a simple retry process that repeats a reboot process will be performed. Then, the monitoring apparatus fails the retry process soon, and will have no choice but to display guidance to request a user's operation as a result.